When I moved to rural Somerset from India seven years ago, hunting for carnivores wasn’t high on my list of things to do. And yet yesterday I set out with my brother, an OS map and some sketchy instructions in a text from a friend. We spent a good few hours foraging through the heather, picking our way around gorse, scrambling around in bracken, discovering that it’s hard to find what you’re not sure you’re looking for. We came back, muddy and empty-handed. So I arranged to meet in the same place with the friend whose message had prompted this botanical safari.
We climb up a rocky pathway and then descend an escarpment on the other side. At one point, my friend veers off the track and I follow, clambering through a knee-high thicket of heather and gorse. The hillside is a pixelated blanket of many colours – flaming orange spikelets of bog asphodel, tiny mauve pompoms of devil’s bit scabious, and mosses of every shade from russet to lime green.
White flags of cotton grass wave, calling a truce on summer. Above, the clouds are low-bellied and full of rain. Below, the sphagnum moss is plump and succulent. After the blinding heat of August, September spreads out like a balm. At every step, the bog reluctantly relinquishes our boots with a slurp, and our footprints quickly fill with water the colour of espresso.
Suddenly my friend squats down, parting the moss gently. “Over here,” he says. And there they are: sundews. These carnivorous little plants grow in acidic bogs, where they spread their bejewelled crowns on cushions of moss.
Ignoring my damp knees, I get out my hand lens for a closer look. The stems unfurling from the knobbly basal rosette are covered with soft white hair. The plump, round leaves (from which the species gets its Latin name Drosera rotundifolia) are covered in crimson tendrils, each topped with a sparkling “dewdrop”. This is a cocktail of digestive enzymes the plant secretes to entrap and then ingest its prey. Under my glass, I watch a tiny beetle meet its sweet, sticky end.
Now I know what to look for, I see them everywhere. Hundreds of sundews scattered across the hillside, waiting for the rain.
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